Buster Keaton

A vaudeville star before the age of 10, Buster Keaton was preparing to make his Broadway debut in 1917 when a meeting with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle changed both the course of his life and the history of cinema forever. Coming into prominence at the same time as Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Keaton - whose deadpan expressions to the onscreen comic disasters that befell him earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face" - became one of the most popular and successful comic actors of the silent era. In fact, his daring comic stunts, which he performed himself without camera trickery, quickly became the stuff of legend in films like "One Week" (1920), "The Three Ages" (1923), "Sherlock, Jr." (1924) and "The Navigator" (1924). Keaton directed and starred in his greatest achievement, "The General" (1927), which was panned by critics at the time and was a major box office flop, but later gained a reputation for being one of the best films made during the silent era. He made the transition to talkies with "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" (1929), but suffered from bouts of alcoholism and other personal problems that eventually relegated him to little more than a gagman. But Keaton made a resurgence decades later after numerous attempts at a comeback, starring opposite Chaplin in "Limelight" (1952) and becoming a frequent guest star on a several popular shows, which helped keep his name alive and assure his place in cinema history.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.